Not sure if this is a bug or Story 2 just isn't out yet -- I had maxed out all my heroes prior to beating Story 1 last boss and then went offline. When I came back just now, the boss is dead but I'm still stuck in Story 1.

@Quimper: I find that this setup is very reliable for mission 18 (with full Cut Out Mastery, The Demon Lord, traps, and all resource skills): 1. Destroy the top-left totem and two trees to the right of it. 2. Build three Temples and one Crypt in that area. (For Night mission, a seized totem shines for a moment before it disappears, so use that moment to quickly place a tower.) 3. During the 1st wave, you should have enough mana to cut another tree to the southeast of the Cave and build another Temple there. These five towers should be enough to keep your gems safe for several waves while you take the Mana Pool. With a few lucky potion drops you should then have some ways of dealing with Amazons, Druids, and the Stronghold (not necessarily in that order). If nothing up to the first wave of Berserks touches your gems, three stars is quite certain.

Ok, since IriySoft will not fix the memory issue (a.k.a. the lag), I looked for a workaround and found one that works for me. Here's how it works: Memory usage goes up noticeably every time the "lit" area changes during Night missions, which is mostly when you build a new tower, and this allocated memory isn't freed when you restart, exit, or clear the mission. So what you have to do is 1. Reload the game when it gets too bad, especially before/after Night missions (including restarts), and 2. If you think you already have enough towers, don't build more (esp. for mission 16-18 where it can get really crowded) Hope this helps.

Nice sequel, but can you please do something about memory usage? I was playing the 18th Night mission and it lagged really badly so I checked system resources and found that a single Chrome process was using 1.42GB (probably all that was left over from Windows and other programs -- my PC has 2GB RAM) and 70-80% CPU (probably from using page files). On the plus side, at least the game saved my progress right after the last enemy was killed and before the game crashed.

Just to prove that it can be done, I've just defeated the boss with only 6 upgrades - 3xDefense and 3xCounter. It's extremely hard, but possible. :) Use defense and counter gems wisely, they're crucial to winning the last few stages.

Tip: A boost only helps increase your chance of "winning" by cancelling a fight you lost and giving you another chance. That's it. It is practically worthless if the match-up is dismal to begin with. It won't guarantee that your new roll will be better than the original, and thus won't guarantee that the final numbers will be skewed in your favor. Keep that in mind before attack-boosting your 3 into an 8, or shield-boosting against two or more 8's in Attrition mode.

Bug: The cloaking duration of the cloaking enemies gets cumulatively longer as you keep restarting the battle. Quitting the battle resets this. This happens to me on level 6 but it might happen on other levels as well.

To those complaining about lasers: Lasers tend to go "active" right on the music beats or half beats (the same seems to be true for other types of bullets as well, but it's more obvious for lasers), so use your ears to time your movement. They also tend to be aimed directly at you, so you can just "stream" (aka "baby step") slowly from left to right or vice versa. To reverse direction, make a short, fast movement in the same direction you're going to create a safe gap behind you (be sure to leave some room for this before you hit the wall), then stream back in the opposite direction.

Somewhere in the middle of bonus level 3.....
"Ha ha, that attack looks like Okuu's Mega Flare. This will be easy."
"....wait a minute, they don't shrink? How can I dodge if they don't...." *dies*
"Y U NO SHRINK!? щ(ﾟДﾟщ)" *dies again*

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